COLLINS: PSU coaching changes may benefit Shrive most

associated press file
Eric Shrive, right, helps carry Joe Paterno off the field in November 2010 after the coach recorded his 400th career victory.

Now that Bill O'Brien is on board, and now that most of his coaching staff has introduced itself to the players who will comprise most of the roster when Penn State takes the field in September, it's time to shift focus a bit to the people who really matter in all of this.

After all, O'Brien can draw up some of the most dynamic offensive schemes ever seen in the Big Ten, but if the players don't make those schemes work, their new coaches are going to look like, well, some of the old coaches.

It's fair to expect changes on the depth chart and wonder which players might get a boost from the big switch. The obvious choice is Matt McGloin. Or Rob Bolden. Or Paul Jones. Or Shane McGregor. Or Garrett Venuto. Or whoever your personal preference is to be Penn State's starting quarterback. A big reason why O'Brien was targeted is because he has successfully worked with a slew of quarterbacks throughout his career, from George Godsey at Georgia Tech to Tom Brady with the Patriots.

Big changes are expected on offense, all around. But the quarterback position is one that will have to fit the system, and who knows which one of those players - if any - will be the one who fits O'Brien's system the best. Assuming it is one of them, it would be difficult to expect a lot of improvement, because learning a new system isn't something that typically comes with ease.

Want to find a position that could get really good, really fast under the new regime? Look at the offensive line.

Want to find a player who could benefit most from a new coach with a new set of ideas and a fresh outlook? Try Eric Shrive.

The two Nittany Lions who cut their teeth on the gridiron at West Scranton High School really couldn't be more different on paper. McGloin came to Penn State as a walk-on, expected to provide little more than depth at quarterback. Shrive, on the other hand, came to Penn State as one of the most heralded high school offensive linemen in the nation. He had dozens of scholarship offers from which to choose. He was, in a loaded 2009 recruiting class for Penn State, the highest-rated member by Rivals.com and Scout.com.

But his playing time hasn't come as quickly as McGloin's. In his two seasons, Shrive has played only in garbage time. He has been on every travel team since the Minnesota game Oct. 23, 2010, but he hasn't been elevated past the third team at any point.

This is where Mac McWhorter comes in.

Gurus are usually relegated to baseball pitchers and golf swings, but if there is such a thing as an offensive line guru, it's McWhorter, Penn State's new line coach. The former Texas offensive line coach wasn't named the 2008 assistant coach of the year by AFCA to garner free air time on the Longhorn Network. He won that award because he earned it, because his reputation as one of the best offensive line coaches in the nation was manifesting itself on the field.

From 2002 through 2010, when McWhorter was coaching the Longhorns' front five, Texas was putting lineman after lineman in the NFL. Eight of them played in the league this year. By comparison, Penn State had three linemen - Levi Brown, Rich Ohrnberger and Stefen Wisniewski - playing in the NFL last year who were drafted since 2003.

Joe Paterno once called Dick Anderson "one of the best offensive line coaches in the history of college football." And Paterno's opinion on football is always going to be a good one. But the fact of the matter is, McWhorter has a chance to do something the tag team of Anderson and Bill Kenney didn't do in recent seasons: develop the most physically gifted players Penn State has.

Last season, Penn State's starting five on the line was pretty good, all things considered. But it didn't have one big-time recruit holding down any of the positions. He did a terrific job, but Quinn Barham was an undersized left tackle who started his career as a center. Right tackle Chima Okoli was a converted defensive tackle. Right guard DeOn'tae Pannell opened each of the last three seasons as a starter and closed all of them as a backup, most recently being overtaken by lightly recruited John Urschel. The highest recruited member of the bunch, left guard Johnnie Troutman, was flat out inconsistent.

By no means is this an endorsement of the ridiculous star system the recruiting services use to rate each school's classes and gauge every college-level high school player's ability, but do you have any idea how many linemen Penn State has on its roster who received four-star ratings or better coming out of high school? Six.

Just one - center Matt Stankiewitch - has played a significant amount of time.

The recruiting services aren't always right. But they can't always be wrong, either. It would seem as though there was too much talent in reserve for Penn State to have to rely on so much shuffling up front.

Maybe McWhorter can get the best out of Shrive, who has had the disadvantage of moving from tackle to guard and back again and forth again throughout his career. Not only did that mean getting used to new positions, it meant getting used to new coaches.

Kenney coached tackles and Anderson coached guards and centers in what was certainly one of the most bureaucratic line coaching situations in the nation.

Shrive can play. We saw that during his days at West Scranton. And maybe he'll get to show that at Penn State sometime soon.

Either way, other than O'Brien, McWhorter is the coach on the new Penn State staff that has the biggest job to do immediately. It's as simple as taking a load of talent and getting it to perform at the only position on the field where the old Nittany Lions staff didn't succeed at doing that.

DONNIE COLLINS covers Penn State football for The Times-Tribune. Contact him at dcollins@timesshamrock.com, read his blog at http://blogs.thetimes-tribune.com/pennstate/, or follow him on Twitter @psubst

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